These are the Lyon(first) and Arabesque(second) Halls. The Lyon hall´s chandelier and wall sconces, as well as some other things in this room were made of lapis and gilded bronze, after Ipolito Monigetti´s designs(all these things have been preserved).

I think the last Emperor to actually live in the Catherine Palace was Alexander II -at least one would suppose by those wonderful watercolors made by Hau during his reign in which he is depicted reading in one of the apartments of Catherine II. However, all the last Empeors used that palace for receptions and reviews.

..."It appears, that the private rooms of the Empress Maria Fyodorovna, were never inhabited by her, as, since these rooms were arranged (in 1820), she has always been living in Pavlovsk, during the residence of the Court in Tsarskoe Selo. In the winter of 1826, when the Court came to Tsarskoe Selo to meet the body of the late Emperor Alexander I, Maria Fyodorovna occupied the private rooms of the Empress Elizabeth Alekseyevna.

these are labeled as the "apartments of Mariia Feodorovna", but i cannot be sure which MF it's referring to....

bedroom

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.....The following room is the Bedroom. It has two windows; the walls are covered with ancient Chinese silk and ornamented with panels of Norwegian maple, the furniture, alcove and columns are also made of the same wood, painted with small flowers, by the artist Bernasconi; the furniture is contemporary, and covered with light olive silk. The ceiling is painted with garlands by B. Medici; from it hangs a chandelier of gilt bronze and crystal; on the walls are two big pictures of Italian school, representing, "The Flight to Egypt".

I have to ask, and I haven't seen this discussed before: when people say they 'lived' in these palaces, did they use all of the rooms? Or were they restriced to a certain wing?

The reason I ask is that the rooms of some of these palaces are so ornate and so elegant it's hard to imagine a family living in them and children running through them.

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Hindsight is 20/20. When the myopic haze of of the present is lifted by the march of time we see it clearly as the past. Sociology, psychology, anthropology. They are all means of understanding that which came before. History cannot stand alone.